Elizabeth Franz, Broadway Icon and Gilmore Girls Actress, Dies at 84 After Cancer Battle

Elizabeth Franz, the Tony-winning actress best known for her role in the 1999 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, has died at 84.

Franz passed away at her home in Woodbury, Connecticut, after a battle with cancer, her husband, screenwriter Christopher Pelham, told The New York Times.

A powerhouse on stage, Franz earned Tony nominations in 1983 and 2002 for her standout roles as Kate Jerome (Matthew Broderick’s mom) in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and the youngest of four sisters in the Morning’s at Seven revival, sharing the stage with Piper Laurie, Frances Sternhagen, and Estelle Parsons.

She also won an Obie Award in 1980 for her performance as the strict nun in Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.

Franz’s career extended to television, with memorable appearances in Roseanne, Gilmore Girls, Law & Order, Cold Case, Dear John, and Judging Amy.

Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Elizabeth Jean Frankovitch moved to New York City to chase her acting dreams.  

Her dadJ oseph worked in a tire factory, and her mom Harriet, a part-time waitress, battled mental illness and would disappear for months at a time.

‘I remember holding onto my father and saying, ‘She’ll come back,’’ Franz told The Times in 1999.

As she recalled in a 2004 interview with What’s On Stage, she quickly found her place in New York City, making a mark both on Broadway and beyond. 

‘Our neighbor had friends there, way up in the Bronx, and I stayed with them for my first year, and then I got digs with four others,’ Franz explained.

She also shared, ‘I trained at the same place and at the same time as M Emmet Walsh, with whom I am reunited in this production: the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, from 1961 to 1962. 

‘After that, we both went to summer stock in Dorset, Vermont, and we did a play a week for 20 weeks.’ 

It was her portrayal of Linda Loman in the 50th-anniversary Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1999 that truly cemented her legacy — a role that won her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Franz had first brought Linda to life at Chicago’s Goodman Theater before taking the character to Broadway in February 1999.

Miller himself, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, praised her performance, saying she ‘has discovered in the role the basic underlying powerful protectiveness, which comes out as fury, and that in the past, in every performance I know of, was simply washed out.’

Franz brought the Linda Loman character back to life in a 2000 TV adaptation of Death of a Salesman, earning an Emmy nomination for her performance. 

Franz’s career extended far beyond the stage. 

She appeared on daytime soaps like As the World Turns and Another World, and had memorable turns on prime-time favorites including Roseanne, The Equalizer, Sisters, and Gilmore Girls. 

On the big screen, she appeared in the 1995 Sabrina remake with Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear.

Her personal life included a first marriage to character actor Edward Binns, who died in 1990. 

The two had shared the stage multiple times, portraying Mary and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Indiana Repertory Theater in 1975, and again in Miller’s A View From the Bridge at the Berkshire Theater Festival in 1981.

Franz is survived by her husband Pelham and her brother, Joe.